


May Or May Not

by ladyoneill



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Major Illness, Pre-Relationship, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-12 00:48:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyoneill/pseuds/ladyoneill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With the diagnosis of Stiles' illness comes a possible fix, but John needs more information.  Spoilers for 3.18; don't read if didn't see or aren't spoiled.</p>
            </blockquote>





	May Or May Not

**Author's Note:**

> This idea just came to me. Spoilers through 3.18 but with a twist in that Stiles isn't possessed. My own theories on the bite and the brain and I apologize for lack of medical research. No clue if the dementia would kill him within a few years, but then this is from the Sheriff's POV and, in his experience, it does. Also kind of pre-slash Derek/Stiles or that might be the Sheriff's projections as well--take it as you want. :)

On hearing Scott swear to Stiles that he'll do anything for him, John's heart thuds loudly in his ears and tears sting his eyes. While for any other best friends, they'd just be words, John wonders if Scott _can_ help him. If the bite...

Turning to Melissa, he murmurs, "If he has...it" he can't say the name of the disease, has never been able to, "can it save him if Scott...?"

Recognition fills her eyes and she glances past him to the neurologist and the technician setting up the MRI to see if they're paying any attention, before murmuring back, "I don't know. I'm not sure Scott knows. Maybe you should ask Derek, but, John, there are risks."

Her caution nearly angers him, but he bites it back. He needs her, can't take out his frustration on her like, earlier, he yelled at Lydia. "I can't lose him, Mel," he finally whispers and meets her compassionate eyes.

"I'll find Derek for you." With a squeeze of his hand, she steps out of the observation room and John focuses back on his son who is being helped to lay down by his best friend.

A few minutes later, he can't help but snort when the technician informs Stiles he can't move.

His son is constantly moving.

Scott and Melissa both join him at the window and he nods when she tells him Derek will be here soon, but his eyes are on his son's still body in the machine.

There's something wrong about him being so still.

*****

John's heart thuds even louder when the doctor points out the spots on Stiles' brain. The wrong colored, wrong looking spots--images ingrained in John's own mind for nearly ten years. Claudia's brain had those spots. 

He grips Melissa's hand like a life line. Behind her, Scott looks stricken, but she's trying to be brave for them both, trying to put a positive spin on this.

But John knows this disease is progressive and there's no cure. Claudia was just past thirty when she was diagnosed, after several months of confusing symptoms. She died a month shy of her thirty second birthday.

Stiles isn't even seventeen. He may not see eighteen, probably won't see twenty one. The remainder of his too young life will be lived in growing confusion, disassociation, angry outbursts, child-like reversions, until the illness takes a toll on his body as well and it just gives out.

Unless...

The test ends. The technician goes into the room to help Stiles out of the machine. The doctor is talking to him about procedures and medications and he can't hear any of that, and finally Melissa kindly asks him to come by Stiles' hospital room later.

Because they're admitting him for the night to monitor his sleep, to make sure he stays in bed like John failed to do for him the night before.

Irrational at it may be, John feels like a complete failure, and he just wants to break down and cry, but he can't. He has to be strong.

The doctor leaves and Derek Hale slips inside, his eyes going past them to where Stiles is sitting in a wheelchair awaiting an orderly, looking...lost.

Melissa explains what's wrong with Stiles and John watches Derek absorb the knowledge, watches his eyes flood with pain that's gone in a moment, watches a stricken look cross his face that's also gone so quickly. 

"What can be done for him?"

"Not...much medically," she admits, and John sees when understanding reaches Derek in the stiffening of his shoulders, the tightening of his jaw.

"The bite cured Erica's epilepsy," Scott says, even as Derek shakes his head.

"Not completely. She was less susceptible to seizures, but the brain is too complex to be fixed by turning."

Stiles is wheeled out of the other room and a part of John needs to be with him, but he also needs more than that statement. "So there's no chance of it curing Stiles?"

"I...don't know. My mother, her mother before her, would give the bite for three reasons. Human mates to wolves already in the Pack or human born family members when they came of age and asked to be turned, and on petition to heal physical ailments. Becoming a werewolf will strengthen the human immune system, which is why, Scott, your asthma was cured. Your lungs fixed themselves. The brain, though, isn't like lungs growing stronger, or a heart valve opening wider, or soft tissue damage being reversed. Scars humans have before they turn remain, so do scars on the brain. It's very complicated which is why a lot of Alphas only turn those already physically fit. It's hard to know what will be cured and what won't. I took a chance with Erica."

"If he turned, would it stop the progression?" Melissa asks.

"Again, I don't know. I'm sorry. As far as I know, my mother never turned anyone but Peter's wife. No one ever petitioned for the bite to heal. I can ask Peter if he knows if his mother did or if he knows how the bite affects the brain. He knows a lot more than I do."

"Will he tells us the truth?" Scott asks skeptically.

"If I tell him it's Stiles, probably. He wants Stiles as a wolf. He once told me his one regret was that he didn't turn him when he had the chance." Derek frowns.

While Scott looks both annoyed and disturbed, John feels only confusion. He doesn't want to trust the word of a murderer. He doesn't like knowing that murderer could have forced his son to become a werewolf against his will like he had Scott. 

"Can you tell if he's lying?" Scott persists.

"Sometimes. It's worth a shot, Scott."

"I need to go be with my son. Please, let me know what..." Shaking his head in dismay, John disengages his hand from Melissa's and leaves.

*****

Stiles isn't asleep. He says he's not tired and John doesn't push it, doesn't ask for a sedative. He's impressed by his son's composure. Worried he'd panic, John carefully laid out the diagnosis, but Stiles already knew.

_"The test was just to provide the physical proof, dad," he said sadly. "I remember the symptoms. I guess I was in denial, but I gotta face it now._

So damn brave, his kid, but John can see the terror lurking in those eyes, both the color and the emotion exactly like Claudia's.

"I don't want to stay here or come back here, until...until..." His voice breaks, tears sparkle in his eyes that he angrily brushes away. "I don't want to be a burden to you, either, so if I have to stay here or a home..."

The thought of putting his vibrant, brash son in a nursing home nearly kills him and he reaches out, takes Stiles' hand in reassurance. "You are never a burden. You're coming home. You're going to go to school for as long as you can and then we'll get tutors or whatever you want. Even if McCall doesn't get me impeached, I can retire. I'll take care of you or we'll get people in. We'll..."

"Dad," Stiles interrupts softly, "You can't put your life on hold for me like you did for mom."

There's age and wisdom on that too young face, in that too young voice, and John wants to cry, to collapse across his child, hold him tightly and never let him go.

Instead he just squeezes his hand and nods, because anything Stiles wants...

There's a sharp rap on the door, and then Derek enters, his face expressionless.

John notes that Stiles' eyes light up when he sees him.

"Hey, so what did Peter say?" Because John kept nothing from Stiles, Stiles who told him flat out that _"If it's a choice between becoming a werewolf and dying like this, I'll be happy to howl at the moon and grow facial hair."_ , though, as he said it, John also could see a hesitance in Stiles. Something more than his illness was on his mind. 

"He's heard of a couple people with brain disorders being turned. Like with Erica, becoming a werewolf didn't cure them, but they didn't get any worse, and, in some ways, they even improved as she did as well. One with MS gained back the strength in his legs but the nerve damage to the brain wasn't fixed. His physical symptoms diminished but he still suffered some mental problems. Another was an older woman, the grandmother of an Alpha, who was bitten near the onset of Alzheimers. Again, she grew physically strong, but the memory issues remained. They never worsened, though."

"So, if I turned, I'd be like this forever."

Derek nods. John feels an odd relief, but Stiles is frowning.

"I'd keep losing time, having nightmares, not be able to read all the time or know if I'm awake or what's real, suffer from insomnia and sleepwalking."

"It's better than withering away and dying," Derek replies harshly. Taken aback John starts to rise and say something, but Stiles is still physically strong and holds him down.

"Are you going to be there for me when I wake up screaming? Or when I realize I have no idea what I've been doing? Or when the words in a book blur into nonsense?" Stiles snaps back.

"The whole Pack will be there for you. We'll help you cope."

"I'll never be able to go to college. Hell, I'll be lucky to graduate high school. No career, no one's going to want to marry me or have kids with me. I'll be the half-crazed runt of the Pack, a burden on all of you and still on my dad."

"Stiles..." John starts, but Derek talks over him.

"You were hoping I'd come back and tell you the bite would cure you completely."

"Yes!"

Looking into his son's angry eyes, John also sees the fear there, and wishes he knew how to comfort him, but he'd always failed with Claudia, too.

To his surprise, Derek doesn't yell back, just rounds the bed, sits in the other chair, and grabs Stiles' other hand, ignoring it when the kid tries to pull away with a huff. "I was a rotten Alpha. My Pack was never what it should have been. Scott's is already so much better, so much more right, Stiles. You have a place there, human or wolf, you know that." His voice and his eyes drop. "When I was away I found a way to talk to my mother and she told me that Beacon Hills needs a protector. That was never meant to be me. It's been Scott since the night Peter bit him. He needs you. He needs us both."

"What if I hurt someone? As a werewolf, I'll be so strong and deadly and I've already tried to hurt people as a human."

"We won't let you," Derek promises.

"What if I'm the nogkitsune?"

"How did you...?"

"I'm not an idiot," Stiles interrupts flatly. "That's what I saw in my dreams last night. A dark reflection of myself. What if I'm possessed and that remains in me when I turn?"

Confused at what they're talking about, but willing to wait for an explanation, John watches Derek so incredibly gently cup Stiles' left cheek and roll his head to the side. Behind his ear is a raised scar in the shape of what looks like a backwards five. Derek's finger drifts over it, traces it, and the intimacy in that touch makes John uncomfortable.

"You're not."

A shudder goes through Stiles and he pulls his hand free of John's to touch the mark himself, eyes going wide in wonder. "I don't remember them testing me."

"Missing time, right?"

Slowly Stiles nods, relief flooding his features, lightning his eyes. "Okay, so just normal crazy, not possessed." That's almost a joke and John's heart thuds loudly again for the third time in as many hours.

They're going to talk about this possession matter and why he's just now learning of it, but he can now see in Stiles a growing determination.

"Okay. Okay." Derek's one hand leaves his face, but the other still holds onto his. Stiles looks over at his dad. "Tomorrow when I go home, Scott can bite me." A small smile flutters around his lips.

"It's not a guarantee of anything, even life," Derek warns.

"Oh, I'm not dying, Derek," Stiles snorts. "I'm going to be a pain in your collective asses for a very long time. I'm guessing this isn't going to cure my ADHD either."

"You wouldn't be you if you weren't hyper, Stiles," Derek says patiently.

John's the one to snort this time and he wonders what the Hell is going on between his son and the much older werewolf. They seem way too comfortable with each other.

But then he remembers that he just promised himself that anything Stiles wants, he gets.

Hoisted on his own petard and, yeah, Stiles as a werewolf is going to be a handful.

But, when hasn't his son been a handful? He wouldn't be Stiles if he wasn't.

"Okay, someone want to explain this possession thing to me right now, and why I haven't heard about it until a few minutes ago, and why you didn't mention it earlier, either of you? And what the Hell is that mark on your necks." Because he can see Derek has one, too.

Two pairs of eyes turn guiltily towards him and inside John smirks. He's still a cop.

End


End file.
